Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
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Towards a treatment of register phenomena in HPSG
Full text linkIn this paper, we deal with register-driven variation from a probabilistic perspective, as proposed in Schäfer, Bildhauer, Pankratz, Müller (2022). We compare two approaches to analyse this variation within HPSG. On the one hand, we consider a multiple-grammar approach and combine it with the architecture proposed in the CoreGram project Müller (2015) - discussing its advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand, we take into account a single-grammar approach and argue that it appears to be superior due to its computational efficiency and cognitive plausibility
On the structure of Welsh noun phrases
Full text linkWelsh noun phrases have had much less attention than Welsh clauses, and there are unresolved issues about the nature of possessors, attributive adjectives, and the definite article and agreement clitics. There is evidence, especially from agreement, that possessors are complements, evidence that attributive adjectives are adjoined to a preceding [LEX+] nominal constituent, and evidence that the definite article and agreement clitics are specifiers. The last of these positions makes it fairly simple to capture the relation between the definite article and agreement clitics and possessors. It is not difficult to formalize these ideas within HPSG
Non-wh relatives in English and Kurdish: Constraints on grammar and use
Full text linkThe paper looks at constraints on non-wh relatives in Sorani Kurdish (Iranian) and English (Germanic). We argue that some of them are grammatical, whereas others introduce social meaning. We present a basic, lexicalist syntactic analysis and expand it with social meaning constraints. We propose that classical sociolinguistic variables have the status of conventional implicatures and the overall assessment of a style is treated as a particularized conversational implicature
Accounting for the variation in West Benue resultative constructions
Full text linkThis paper investigates the variation of resultative serial verb constructions in Benue-Kwa languages. The main claim is that the variation can be explained assuming three versions of general lexicon rules which turn main verbs into complex predicates selecting for a second verb and attracting its arguments. Each language has a language specific version of these lexicon rules, enriched with language specific peculiarities to account for the specific behaviour of verbal inflection. The fact that not all of the lexicon rules do operate in each languages is another source of variation
Respectively interpretation and Binding Conditions A and B
Full text linkThe theory of respectively interpretation proposed in Yatabe and Tam (2021) "In defense of an HPSG-based theory of non-constituent coordination" (Linguistics and Philosophy 44, pp. 1-77) entails that Binding Conditions A and B need to be formulated as constraints on the form of semantic representations. It is possible to formulate the two binding conditions as such constraints if anaphoric relations are encoded in semantic representations in a way analogous to the way they are encoded in Discourse Representation Theory
Chinese quantifier scope, concord, and Lexical Resource Semantics
Full text linkThis paper considers Chinese quantifier scope, an important, outstanding
area of Chinese linguistics. In particular, there are two open questions on the
subject: (1) the guiding principles that determine (a) the scopal
readings of quantifiers and (b) the sometimes mandatory co-occurrence of the
universal quantifier mei (every) and the universal
adverb dou, and (2) the semantic functions of mei and
dou and their connection to the co-occurrence of these words.
We reappraise three prior accounts of these subjects, reason through their
consequences on some exemplary data, offer a new explanation based upon
concord, a mechanism that is commonplace in many languages, and formulate it in
lexical resource semantics (LRS). We use two principles adapted from
Richter and Sailer\u27s (2004) analysis of negative concord,
expanded with a new quantifier order constraint to generate a
coherent answer to the two aforementioned questions
Grammatical error detection using HPSG grammars: Diagnosing common Mandarin Chinese grammatical errors
Full text linkComputational Grammars can be adapted to detect ungrammatical sentences, effectively transforming them into error detection (or correction) systems. In this paper we provide a theoretical account of how to adapt implemented HPSG grammars for grammatical error detection. We discuss how a single ungrammatical input can be reconstructed in multiple ways and, in turn, be used to provide specific, high-quality feedback to language learners. We then move on to exemplify this with a few of the most common error classes made by learners of Mandarin Chinese. We conclude with some notes concerning the adaptation and implementation of the methods described here in ZHONG, an open-source HPSG grammar for Mandarin Chinese
Conjuncts-as-complements: A lexical approach to SGF coordination in German
Full text linkIn this paper, I shall discuss a
peculiar coordination construction in German, where the shared
subject of the two conjuncts is not found peripheral, but is contained
within the first conjunct. Following Höhle (1983), this construction
is called “Subject Gaps in Finite/Fronted” clauses (SGF). I shall
discuss previous accounts, both symmetric coordination approaches
(Frank, 2002; Kathol, 1999), as well as asymmetric adjunction
approaches (Büring & Hartmann, 1998). The analysis I shall propose
will treat the construction as coordination semantically, yet assume
a head complement structure that combines the licensing first
conjunct with an incomplete (=slashed) coordinate structure
complement. I shall show how this addresses the ATB condition, permits
straightforward licensing of the subject gap, and provides better
control over the second conjunct, thereby improving over the adjunct
analysis
How to be a ham sandwich or an eel: The English deferred equative and the Japanese eel sentence
Full text linkIn some languages including English and Japanese, a nominal predicate construction (NPC; "NP1 is NP2") has a marked variety—"open-ended-relation NPCs" (ONPCs), to label it—where the referents of the subject NP and the predicate NP are understood to be in some pragmatically prominent relation other than identity or inclusion (e.g. I\u27m the ham sandwich \u27I\u27m the customer who ordered the ham sandwich\u27). The Japanese ONPC has been called the "eel sentence (eel construction)", after an oft-cited example involving unagi \u27eel\u27 as its predicate NP. The English ONPC is discussed in good detail by Ward (2004; "Equatives and deferred reference", Language 80) under the rubric of the "deferred equative". The ONPCs in the two languages can be naturally used only under limited discourse configurations, with the English one being more severely constrained than the Japanese one. This work develops semantic analyses of the two ONPCs that improve on previous accounts
The grammatical representation of expletive negation
Full text linkExpletive negation refers to constructions where a negator in the complement of certain lexical items does not change the polarity of the complement proposition. Jin & Koenig (2021) show that expletive negation occurs rather widely in languages of the world and in very similar environments. They propose a language production model of why such apparently illogical uses of negation arise in language after language. But their study does not address the grammatical status and representation of expletive negation. In this paper, we argue that expletive negation is part of the lexical knowledge speakers have of their language and that the negator in expletive negation constructions contributes a negation to a non-at-issue content associated with expletive negation triggers. We provide a Lexical Resource Semantics analysis of how triggers combine in a non-standard manner with the standard semantic content of their complements: the negation (and in some cases an additional modal operator) of the content of their complement is part of the trigger’s non-at-issue content while the scope of the negation is an argument of the trigger’s MAIN content. Finally, we suggest that the expletive use of the French negator ne includes a lexical constraint that requires it to modify a verb that reverse selects for an expletive negation trigger